Stars (TW - Crystalpine Stinger) already working on Firelands Heroic - Shannox World First Kill
A lot of guilds killed all the bosses of the Firelands raid in normal mode already but it seems that Stars (TW - Crystalpine Stinger) decided to take it one step further.

After clearing the encounters in normal mode, the entire raid changed faction to reset their raid ID and started working on heroic encounters shortly after, that kind of thing happened in the past and it's not really surprising to see it used again to grab first kills.

As I write these lines, Stars killed Shannox in Heroic Mode. It's not really my place to judge if something is against the rules or not and I will just keep tracking heroic first kills as they happen.



Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Eternal Embers and Seething Cinders Droprates
You’re assuming the drop chances for embers averages out to .5 per boss in 10’s and 2 per boss in 25’s, which it doesn’t. Whether you’re in 10’s or 25’s you’re going to see an equal drop average for Eternal Embers per player, and the same can be said for Seething Cinders. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Content - Differences between PvE and PvP Players
The answer to your question revolves around a common difference in how PvE players and PvP players approach the game. Generally speaking, PvE players want more quests, more dungeons and more raids to experience -- more and new content is king. On the other hand, while some PvP players do want new maps, many others would be happier if we perfected the Arena or BG maps that already exist - or even if we cut existing maps. After all, PvP players don’t graduate out of Arathi Basin or Dalaran sewers the same way PvE players graduate from dungeon to heroic, or raid tier to raid tier. We did make some improvements to the existing PvP maps, such as trying to return Ring of Valor to circulation and changing the way flags work in Eye of the Storm (for rated play).

We’d love to add a lot more maps than we currently do, but we need to do it in such a way that doesn’t make the PvP experience worse for players who are more interested in refining their PvP experience than in seeing new maps. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 4.2 Hairstyles
We had a bunch of hairstyles we threw in for testing on the PTR and the majority of them did not pass the test. (quality, art direction, bugs, etc.) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 4.0 Raids now puggable
We specifically intend for the 4.0 raids to be puggable now that Firelands is out. Grabbing some tier 11 by way of Justice, quest rewards, plus across the board difficulty nerfs should really be enough to get them going.

The patch has only been out a day or so though. I think it'll probably take a little bit before people really get it into their heads that they should be pugging the previous tier because it's not too hard to be successful. It's just getting people used to the various encounters and mechanics.

Maybe people are waiting for the holiday weekend? If nothing else, leading one yourself is always an option. I think we'd agree that we need some better ways to get pug raids together considering we intend to follow the "New Raid is Hard, old Tier is Puggable" format from here on.

Still unsure what that means regarding the final raid (i.e. Deathwing). Do pugs not get to see him until the next expansion is released? (Not saying whether that's a good thing or not, but personally I enjoyed getting to Arthas on some of my alts without spending near as much time as I did on my main.)
In ICC we had a stacking raid buff over time which gradually made the content easier. Not saying we’ll do that exact thing again but the philosophy was around even then that everyone who wants to can eventually see the content, but it’s going to take very organized groups (which typically means raiding guilds) to see the encounters first.

So casuals will constantly be a tier behind for the rest of the life of this game? If that is what is actually coming out of your mouth I'll save myself the time and unsub now. What a piss poor vision for your game. There are normal and heroic versions of raids for a reason. That heroic difficulty was implemented so that the two segments of the population (casual and hardcore) would both have something to do. You are now bifurcating the raiding population AGAIN, by telling casuals that they have to run around in the left overs.
Trying to label all of our players as “casual puggers” vs.” hardcore raiders” is ridiculously simplistic. Among raiders there is an enormous diversity of players. There are those who will raid virtually every night when new content is out, to guilds that raid once a week (and even then will cancel raid nights fairly commonly). If you must try to label raiders, you’d be closer to the Blizzard model if you said normal mode is for organized raids, heroic mode is for more hardcore organized raids, and the previous tier of content (and Baradin Hold) is targeted for pick-up groups. Also consider that even within a raid zone we try to design easier bosses (usually near the front) and more challenging ones (usually at the end) which can help blur those lines and offer smoother transitions for each category.

Overall, we think you’ll have a better experience playing World of Warcraft if you play with friends, either existing or those you meet in game. WoW, while much more solo friendly than most older MMO games, is still intended as a multiplayer game. We provide features like Dungeon Finder for when playing with friends isn’t possible, and as we said above, we’d like to offer more features like that. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Tabards Tab
Are there any considerations for a tab for your tabards?
Yes!

[...] To clarify: he asked if we were considering it, and yes we are considering it. :) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Keyring Removal
On a serious point though some people are upset about the removal of the key ring. While that seems like we're just taking it out to be bullies, it specifically frees up storage space we can then make into useful features. Not that it will specifically be used for 'tabard storage', but we are going to be using the space the removal of the key ring freed up. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Thrall and Aggra's "wedding"
Correct. Their pledging of their lives to one another was essentially their 'wedding', although I'm sure Orcs don't use such nomenclature to refer to these things. Maybe 'life bond' fits better. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Does Blizzard plan on adding the rest of the dungeons and raids to the Dungeon Journal?
Absolutely. With the time it takes to present a single boss in the Dungeon Journal we were only confident supplying Cataclysm content with the release of the feature in 4.2, but we are on a path to filling it out with all dungeons and raids in the entire game. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Steam Summer Sales
In a very, very, very unrelated sidenote, Steam Summer Sales are up. I don't usually news non-WoW stuff but ... well, I like Valve and I'm pretty sure a lot of people will be happy to hear the news. Also, don't forget that we have a Video Games Forum!
This article was originally published in forum thread: Stars Heroic Shannox World First Kill, Blue Posts started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 622 Comments
  1. Jurwi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ShiroRX View Post
    pissing other players off = less money.
    Except none of the whiny "other players" will pay less for anything even if they don't get banned. Logic fails.
  1. Mousiest's Avatar
    Who really cares... I mean honestly. This just proves that Blizzard made raid content too easy this patch, if the week content was released, a heroic boss was downed (as well as the entire normal Tier going down the very first night >.
  1. Jurwi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xathiann View Post
    Ensidia did the same thing twice in WotLK, and everyone cheered and stood behind them. Fucking hypocrite.
    Quite the opposite really, the same whine was targeted at Ensidia as well.
  1. Sanctioned's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xathiann View Post
    Ensidia did the same thing twice in WotLK, and everyone cheered and stood behind them. Fucking hypocrite.
    Why are you calling him a hypocrite when you don't know their stance when Ensidia did stuff like this?
  1. Sammonoske's Avatar
    Payed to get a heroic boss kill for bragging rights. I personally find it low and unsportsmanlike in a way.
  1. mmoc77c9f4e306's Avatar
    Blizzard knew that this could happen, they made money so they are happy and do not care what any of you think.

    ---------- Post added 2011-07-01 at 07:40 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Bombpanda View Post
    Who really cares... I mean honestly. This just proves that Blizzard made raid content too easy this patch, if the week content was released, a heroic boss was downed (as well as the entire normal Tier going down the very first night >.
    Keep in mind that Stars is a hardcore guild...
  1. Dragaan's Avatar
    I don't think it's against the rules. Everyone in the major guilds knew about this, but no one actually did it because people look down on it. Wowprogress also refuses to acknowledge these kills.

    Why?

    Because the only reason a "first" would mean anything is if everyone (at least all the major players) is on equal grounds. No one should have an advantage like this. They're world first out of 1 guild (themselves). Grats. Sure in the past Asian guilds have gotten content later. That sucked. People still acknowledged kills from other US and EU guilds at these same times because there were TONS of guilds competing. Stars has no competition at all right now. So yea.....grats...
  1. Kreww's Avatar
    Good shit for them, it's blizzards fault for overlooking the problem. I doubt that they had any knowledge of this so called "exploit." They must have just happened to fall upon this by accident; oh well shit happens guess the one's who shoot up wow will have to get over it.
  1. mmoc77c9f4e306's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yanzina View Post
    Kill is a kill. No matter how you do it. Kill is a kill
    Yes indeed.
  1. lopk's Avatar
    Why would they be banned? I understand what they still was...uh...dishonorable I guess, but it's not an exploit. It's not shady at all. Blizzard should have been able to see this coming.

    EDIT: It's called hardcore raiding for a reason. If you want to be the very best, you've got to use the resources available to you.
  1. Syce's Avatar
    i think what will happen is this: A) Blizzard changes faction changing rules. so they lock out raids. B) the Other top Guilds going for World First see this and start doing it. C) Blizzard punishes Stars with like a 3 day ban or something.
  1. adezero's Avatar
    it's a game.

    does STARS action have any effect on you? no, move along.

    you wont care about any first boss kills in a month either.
  1. KCguy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bombpanda View Post
    Who really cares... I mean honestly. This just proves that Blizzard made raid content too easy this patch, if the week content was released, a heroic boss was downed (as well as the entire normal Tier going down the very first night >.
    How so? Many guilds barely got normal modes done with BOT and BWD. Once they got to heroic modes that's where they struggled. Maybe one or two bosses down and that was it. I mean really how many guilds cleared every boss in heroic mode? Just because some guilds have gotten normal modes down doesn't mean anything. They're very good guilds and it's expected they will get it down fast. They focus on heroics and nothing more. Everyone else will struggle with the normal modes specifically the end bosses in Firelands I'm sure just like last tier.

    Remember these guilds clearing the normal modes don't speak for most guilds.
  1. Avelii's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Razorice View Post
    exept that they didn't pay real money for it, they just used class OP'ness.
    Yes, certainly in the whole history of "clever class compositions" (or straight stacking thereof), no-one ever paid a single buck for a second WoW account and a few expansion packs, to level up class X quickly via RAF with another veryimportantworldfirstguild-member. Which would've been more expensive than a single faction transfer I'd guess. No, nobody's done something like this...

    The whole world-first "race" is a joke anyways, would you take an olympic race serious, where certain contestants start a minute after the others (different realm restarts in different regions), and some of them forced to carry 'round a heavy ball and chain (playing on a crowded server with huge lag)? Hilarious... All I mind is, Stars achieved what they wanted, and that sounds like they're happy. Which in turn makes me happy for them. *spreads the happiness*
  1. mmoc65f3b338ed's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by parabol23 View Post
    There's no reason why they should be banned, or that it shouldn't count. they took the extra step. wasted money. and now they have the 1st

    It's blizzards responsibility to make sure this doesn't happen. It's no secret that people exploit the game whenever possible, and this specific exploit has been done before.

    And if your all butthurt cuz they beat ya too it, too bad for you it seems. It's ok tho, its an acheivment...
    They shouldn't get banned for this? When blizzard banned Ensidia for using Saraonite Bombs against LK to bug out the fight? Really? Personally i couldn't give a fuck, i'm happy enough with just a Beth'tilac down tonight, but it's not particularly fair you must admit.
  1. mmoc733d5194b0's Avatar
    This is not about money or Blizzard...

    It's a race for the first kill and when you do it alone (because using and outgame feature to do it is not "part of the game"), no matter how long it takes you no matter how you do it, you will allways grab the World First. I don't think you can call it cheating but they can not claim it as a World First since "World" here means only Stars.

    They raced alone nothing to be proud about, and doing it so fast make it level to normal modes for guilds of such talent, i think the only World First worth talking about is Ragnaros'
  1. lopk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by asheke View Post
    They shouldn't get banned for this? When blizzard banned Ensidia for using Saraonite Bombs against LK to bug out the fight? Really? Personally i couldn't give a fuck, i'm happy enough with just a Beth'tilac down tonight, but it's not particularly fair you must admit.
    Ensidisa abused a bug.

    Stars did not exploit at all.
  1. Exodus_The_Mage's Avatar
    Faction change to reset raid ID wasn't even a new thing. Adept used that during TOGC to get extra 50 attempts on Anub.

    That was T9 content, it's T12 now. 2 years have passed. If Blizzard hasn't fixed that all this while, it's quite clear that they don't care about this.
  1. Drithien's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yanzina View Post
    Any guild could have done this, it's like paragon's kill on nef. They thought of it and got it.
    As I said, if this was an actual competition with clear rules, and they didn't cheat, then it would be their win. But such a competition doesn't exist. In what exists, as far as I can understand there are rules about achieving a kill through in-game mechanics, that was not an in-game mechanic. In Nefarian's kill, in-game mechanics were used, and maybe even abused, so at least that rule was not broken. It was a kill, that they deserved, no one helped them to achieve it, but it is not a world first kill while strictly using in-game mechanics, because that competition begins from the next reset. It is a world first kill in the category of buying advantages with real money.
  1. Licarius's Avatar
    Stars didn't exploit the fight itself like Ensidia with Saronite Bombs. did they exploit the world first race? yes. what they did was NOT illegal, and no they shouldn't get banned. BUT, as a top10 guild they've just ruined their reputation and any respect people may have had for them. Grats on the kill!!!! but, shame on the way you got it.....

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